Step by Step Mixing – Check out this book

I’ve recently become acquainted with Bjorgvin Benediktsson over at AudioIssues.com. The more I get to know him, the more I admire his work ethic and skills.

We chat about every week and recently, I found out that he has written a book called “Step By Step Mixing – Quality Mixes With Only 5 Plugins”.

As soon as I heard “5 Plugins”, I knew I needed to take a look.

See, I don’t believe that you need every plugin in existence to be able to get a mix right. I believe that you should find plugins that you can get to know and get the most out of them.

Here’s a short excerpt from his book. You will probably hear some things that I teach like 80/20… and mix A LOT… totally agree with Bjorgvin here.

A Note About Mixing

Mixing is a very subjective concept. There are a lot of variations of a “good” mix. A mix you pay $200 for and a mix you pay $400 for (or even $4000) isn’t always double the quality. It has to do with the experience of the mixing engineer, how in-demand their services are, and their willingness to work within whatever budget you have.

In addition, mixing is also hard to teach because each song is different and poses different challenges. In the following pages I will be giving you my “80/20 rules” for mixing. It’s all about what you should focus on the most in order to get the biggest wins. Therefore, I hope to cover the biggest subjects so you can go mix your own music with confidence.

Remember, mixing skills grow from practice, not from reading books (ironically enough…) so I encourage you to mix as much music as you can in order to improve your skills. I’m certainly not the best mixing engineer in the world. Sometimes I don’t even think I’m that good, but that’s more the everlasting presence of the “imposter syndrome” and my neurotic insecurity than actual lack of skill. However, I do know enough to teach you the things to focus on and the mistakes to avoid. I’m constantly learning with every new production and you should as well.

So read this book with an emphasis on keeping the big ideas in mind and trying everything out on as many multi-tracks as you can get your hands on.

Here’s another thing that may sound familiar… so I’m glad he’s backing it up by saying that he mixes in mono for the first few HOURS of his mix.

Check this out.

Mixing In Mono

Mixing in mono is an important part of the mixing process. Personally, I start my mix and mix almost entirely in mono on a one-driver Mixcube for the first few hours until I have a rough mix in place. If you can make your mix sound good in mono on a Mixcube then you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how good it sounds when you finally flip it into stereo and push it through your better sounding studio monitors.

It’s kind of like athletes that run with weights on their feet. They make it deliberately hard for them to train and give themselves an uphill struggle to begin with so that when the weights are off everything feels easier. So basically, if you can make your mix sound awesome in mono on a Mixcube it’ll usually sound awesome everywhere else.

Bjorgvin’s book is going to be amazing. I can’t wait for it to come out.

To find his book (in physical form or Kindle) you can click here <–my Amazon Link or just go to Amazon and search for Step By Step Mixing: How to Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins.